Exploiting social cues for safe human-robot interaction in home environments

Objectives

To investigate the dynamic alignment between robots and humans, specifically for the role of non- verbal behaviours in supporting safe interaction and linguistic communication. Joint action and cooperation between humans and robots are a key issue for the design of safe service robots. Cooperation is based on both linguistic interactions (e.g. a human giving instructions, and the robot asking for clarifications) and non-verbal behaviour (e.g. gestures, facial feedback).

Expected Results

The design of the cognitive architecture and the human-robot interaction experiments will result in novel design principles and mechanisms for the robot’s use and understanding of gestures (e.g. pointing) and facial expressions (gaze direction) to support the learning and understanding of demonstrative pronouns such as “this” “that” during joint tasks between the robot and human participant.

C.V. Highlights

Double M.Sc. in space science and technology, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, and Aalto University, Finland. Major in space robotics and automation